Farm bill amendment fight begins

After wasting a week or so, the Senate has agreed to debate 73 amendments to its farm bill, S 3240, that will spend nearly $1 trillion, about 80 percent of it on food stamps, over the next decade.

While hailed by the Senate Agriculture Committee as a major reform, the bill shifts most of its savings from ending several traditional supports for corn and other commodities to heavily subsidized crop insurance, leaving a net gain for taxpayers of about $23 billion, or 2.3 percent of its total cost. Food activists, environmental groups and fiscal conservatives have turned to the amendments in an effort to shift money away from corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice and peanuts to fresh foods, sustainable farming, nutrition and conservation, most of which would benefit California farmers.

The bill cuts conservation programs by $6.5 billion or 10 percent. These programs provide farmers with incentives to improve farming practices to improve air, water and soil quality, and conserve grasslands and wetlands. The farm bill is one of the biggest pieces of environmental legislation Congress votes on, because it affects practices on the 40 percent of the United States, and one quarter of California, that is farmed.

An amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to codify an agreement between big egg producers and the Humane Society of the United States was dropped under heavy pressure from farm groups. It would have imposed California’s humane treatment standards, which include larger cages, for egg-laying hens nationwide. The egg industry wants uniform national standards, but big farm groups fear that the amendment would set a precedent for animal rights groups to impose humane treatment standards on other livestock.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is backing a series of amendments that would trim crop insurance subsidies, now expected to cost $95 billion, link crop insurance to conservation efforts, and help beginning or socially disadvantaged farmers, many of whom are concentrated in California’s immigrant Latino and Hmong in the San Joaquin Valley and African farmers near San Diego. Many of these amendments are forged from bipartisan alliance between fiscally conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. Environmental Working Group is backing an amendment by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, that would restore $4.5 billion in food stamp cuts by paring crop insurance.

Michael Dimock, president of San Francisco based Roots of Change, which is trying to make all California agriculture sustainable by 2030, noted two important cracks in the farm lobby. One is the split between Midwest corn and soybean growers and Southern rice and peanut farmers, who are complaining that their subsidies won’t be as lofty as before. Another split is between old-line hunger groups that have supported a calorie-based approach to aid and groups that want to shift nutrition aid to healthier food.